Labour of Love

INDIA IN LOVE
Marriage and Sexuality in the 21st Century
Ira Trivedi
Aleph; 416 pages; Rs 595

A book that claims to take up the challenge of documenting what it calls India's "sexual revolution" makes me quirk an eyebrow in mistrust. After all, who is to say, first, what a "revolution" is and, second, if India can be unified at all to understand this "revolution" in its entirety. Ira Trivedi's India in Love introduces itself as a book that provides "cutting-edge, incisive evaluation of how marriage, sexuality and love work in contemporary, urban India" - again, a sentence that compels me to scrutinise and highlight each misstep.

The contents page piqued my curiosity - it mentions "queers", "pimps" and "hoes" in the same breath as marriage and Indian weddings. The introduction announces that the book has two parts: one about India's sexual revolution and the other about India's love and marriage revolution. Neatly divided across two sections, 10 chapters and three strands of "personal narratives, conversations with experts and extensive analysis based on research", the narrative is well structured, complete with an index, notes and bibliography. The painfully dull introduction is a poor start to a book that is, despite many editorial and typographical errors, vibrant.

The first part of India in Love is devoted to the cult of sexuality across the ages, from the Kamasutra to Bollywood. Ms Trivedi, through her interviews with college students, gay men and women, prostitutes and young couples, charts the phenomenon of what she calls a "sexual revolution". She, however, structures it around an extensive account of mythology and folklore, in which she pits the Radha-Krishna love cult against the duty-bound, socially appropriate narrative of the Rama-Sita marital relationship. Ms Trivedi skillfully describes other dichotomies of Indian mythology, such as the celebration of carnal love in the Kamasutra and a complete shunning of it in the Manusmriti. She even links it to the extramarital bliss of Radha and Krishna and the troubled, stoic sacrifices that Sita made to help Rama maintain his image as maryada purushottam. In the same chapter, she narrates the story of a confused college boy, Prayag, who sees women only as "good" or "bad", as "fast" or "slow" - and, essentially, as Radha or Sita - even as she heavily quotes from (and admires) the controversial author Wendy Doniger's reading of Hindu mythology.

Ms Trivedi also mentions the role of the British in establishing sexual orthodoxy, especially through their own conservative, Victorian principles. But her exploration of India's encounter with the British falls short of anything more than a perfunctory glance. She neglects, for example, the deliberate attempts by the British to privilege reactionary interpretations of Brahmanical texts, such as the Manusmriti, in order to strengthen Hindu orthodoxy.

The first part of the book hops across pubs, decrepit hotel rooms and red-light districts such as Delhi's GB Road - all at a pace that makes the book hard to put down. She quotes figures, statistics and research across the spectrum of population growth and sex ratios with as much elan as she unravels the market for condoms, sex toys and lingerie. Her observations and research about lingerie are particularly fascinating; she shows how what was once considered a utility item has become an accessory. She speaks to sexologists, lingerie designers, sex clinic quacks, sex toy vendors, pimps, gigolos and gay men, highlighting aspects of sexuality in India that are still in many ways kept under wraps. This is particularly true of the way Ms Trivedi chronicles the lives of a lesbian and a gay man seeking love and companionship, shifting the focus from the single-minded attention mainstream narratives pay to their sexual preferences. But, consistently, she squarely places women at the heart of this revolution.

The second part of India in Love is more sombre and definitely a poor cousin to its racy first half. But the research efforts that Ms Trivedi puts in are thorough. Especially memorable is her chronicle of the Love Commandos, an organisation that saves young couples from honour killings by giving them shelter in Delhi's dingy Paharganj area, and was featured in the popular television series Satyamev Jayate. She addresses several issues through analyses of Bollywood films like Silsila, Hum Aapke Hain Kaun and Mohabbatein - which even most popular literature dismiss as inconsequential. I wish Ms Trivedi had delved into Bollywood at least as much as she did into mythology, if only because the Indian consciousness is defined by the films the country produces and absorbs.

Though I started reading this book with scepticism, the research and sheer scale of the subjects that Ms Trivedi attempts to cover in a single edition are worthy of applause. The reader may not find any definite answers, since the "revolution" itself is an evolving subject, but the author's investigative skills are commendable. And while the prose may be a little too colloquial and chatty in parts, Ms Trivedi's book tackles the subject of love and sex with a solid backing of facts, figures and anecdotal evidence.